Alan Watts

The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

If you really understand Zen, you can use any book, even the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

History doesn’t mean dates and wars and textbooks to me; it means the unconquerable pioneer spirit of man.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

I can’t change history, I don’t want to change history. I can only change the future. I’m working on that.

The things you own end up owning you.

Better contraceptives will control population only if people will use them. A nuclear holocaust can be prevented only if the conditions under which nations make war can be changed. The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. We need to make vast changes in human behavior.

You’re only lonely if you’re not there for you.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horseraces.